


SS Drabbles 2016

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 04:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12880611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: I totally forgot about posting these at the beginning of 2017...





	SS Drabbles 2016

**Author's Note:**

> I totally forgot about posting these at the beginning of 2017...

SS drabbles 2016

by Bluewolf

**A Weekend Away**

They didn't usually take a long weekend away as late in the year as December, but life had been more than hectic during October and November and Jim was almost totally burned out. Not that he was the only one - everyone in Major Crime was running on fumes. In a moment of unaccustomed cynicism, Blair had suggested that all of Cascade's criminals had decided to use those months to steal their Christmas presents...

However, most of the cases were solved, and arrests made, by the end of November, and Simon saw to it that everyone got at least one extra day off - and nobody complained when he decided that Jim should get a Friday off and Blair be given the Monday after the same weekend; and because one was off, the other took the time off as well.

And so Jim and Blair borrowed Steven's cabin just inside Cascade National Forest for the first weekend in December.

There was snow on the ground, but not much; the forecast was for good weather - cold but sunny - and Jim agreed that the weather seemed set to continue fine for several days.

Once they reached the cabin, it took them less than an hour to get a fire going (Steven always left plenty of wood ready for use in a huge shed) and the truck unpacked.

Jim sat in front of the fire, half dozing, while Blair prepared a meal. After eating they washed the dishes then Jim put on his coat and wandered outside.

Blair looked at the door for a minute, wondering if Jim needed a few minutes of solitude before he could begin to unwind, then put on his own coat and followed Jim outside. He didn't need to say anything, but he did want to make sure Jim was all right.

He found his sentinel standing gazing up at the stars.

"Jim?" He wondered for a second if Jim had zoned, but he got an immediate reply.

"Out here, with no street lights... The stars are so bright," Jim said.

Blair nodded, remembering nights when he had spent time stargazing in fairly remote areas. "Do you know any of the constellations?" he asked.

Jim shook his head. "It's the brightest stars that show up and identify the constellations," he said. "And I can see that some are brighter than the others. But I can see so many stars... Some of them are quite faint, even for me, but the sheer number of stars I see hides the patterns of the constellations. In a way I suppose I'm missing out because I can't make out any constellations - but you don't miss what you never knew."

Blair nodded again as he looked up at the constellations that were so familiar to him. He wished he could see as many stars as Jim did... but he knew that if he did, he would miss those familiar constellations.

***

**The Tree**

Whatever was happening, no matter how busy Major Crime was, Rhonda always made sure that there was a smallish, decorated tree standing on her desk every December. Apart from anything else, on the desk under it was a useful place for the detectives to put the presents for the 'Secret Santa' gift exchange she organized every year.

Having it standing on her desk did mean that everything else - like her computer monitor and keyboard, inbox and outbox - was pushed to one cramped side of her desk, but there was nowhere on the floor she could put a two to three foot tree without its getting very much in the way of anyone trying to move around the bullpen.

Originally she had had flashing lights on it, but even she found them intrusive, and she knew that for Jim they were a positive distraction, so she had changed to non-flashing lights. Several of the occupants of the bullpen had commented on that, and how they preferred the 'new' lights.

And so she continued happily putting a tree on her desk every December...

***

**Blair and the Bells**

Blair's first memory of bells dated from around the time he was four. Naomi had just moved in with Murray, and on the first Sunday they were there, Blair was awakened by a steady, monotonous, one-note 'dong... dong... dong...' coming, as he discovered later that day, from the church a couple of hundred yards away as it called its congregation to the early morning service.

He came to hate that bell during the three months they stayed there (and after they left, Naomi admitted to him that the sound of that once every fifteen seconds or so bell was one of the things that had driven her away from the place, even though she was still fond of Murray).

His second memory of bells, about a year later, was still to some degree unpleasant because of the why of the bells. They were staying with Tony by then, and Tony had cats. Several cats. And they were hunters, so Tony had put bells on their collars to warn the birds. Some of the time, the warning worked, some of the time the bells didn't ring because the cat was moving so carefully, and the result was a dead bird.  Blair didn't dislike the cats, but he hated the way they hunted the small birds.

His next memory of bells was the school bell that called him in for lessons and told him when it was time to go home. He both liked and disliked that bell - he welcomed the call to lessons, and he was sorry when the school day came to an end, for he quickly discovered that he loved learning things. Naomi didn't always send him to school as she made her carefree way around the world - sometimes there wasn't a school of any kind where they stopped for a while - but when there was, Blair insisted that she let him go to school. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to. Because he liked it. She 'heard that', and eventually accepted without argument when he said he wanted to go to university, young though he still was.

Blair was eighteen before he became aware of the sound of bells again, and he added them fairly quickly to the (short) list of bells he didn't particularly like. Not that the sound was unpleasant - unlike the monotonous monotone dong... dong... dong of the church bell fourteen years earlier. It was just that the sound, although musical, was so repetitive...

Although grants and a scholarship covered many of his expenses and Naomi did give him a (small) allowance, he still found money tight and taking holiday jobs was the best way to provide a small boost to his income. And so, the December he was eighteen, he found himself a job in one of Cascade's malls as one of Santa's elves. 'Santa' (accompanied by half a dozen elves) arrived at the mall each morning in a wheeled sleigh drawn by a reindeer (hurriedly taken away by one of the elves, whose sole job it was to look after the animal, within a few minutes of their arrival - heaven forbid that the creature pooped in the mall! - then brought it back in the evening to take Santa away. Both reindeer and sleigh were decorated with bells and the animal moved fast enough that the bells rang cheerfully, warning everyone in the mall that something was coming.

Blair enjoyed working as a Christmas elf, and did it every December until eventually he met up with a sentinel, and found he no longer had the time free to do the job. He was sorry about that, though at the same time he wasn't sorry not to have to hear the sound of sleigh bells every morning and evening.

And he made sure thereafter that when he went Christmas shopping it wasn't at a time when Santa was arriving - or leaving - in his sleigh.


End file.
